My beloved is (sporadically) learning Mandarin, though the only bits of it I've picked up from him are handy words to use in restaurants, eg "twice cooked pork". He finds it fairly challenging, but good fun.

On a massage table! I'm getting massages from a Chinese woman. I told her the Chinese I know (hello, how are you, I am Japanese(!)) so she said she'd teach me a couple of words each time (hence the "accidently" in my first Chinese post).

She just tells me verbally. The main part of this post comes from a colleague (the one I call my stalker) who knows some Chinese. The examples and the previous post are via google. Googling's not so easy when you don't know how to write the words! Basically, I guessed until I happened across something close & then I was able to refine the search.